Just as
quickly as Thermosonic's ThermoEngine entered the cooling market, it has since managed to
get itself into controversy. The controversy stemmed from apparent differences
between the Thermoengine heatsinks being circulated around the hardware review community, and those available for
sale on the retail level. Since a lot of the interest in
the Thermoengine heatsink surrounded the hollow center core, suspicions were aroused when retail units
started popping up with solid cores.

The
evolution of a product is nothing new, and even though the differences between the two types of Thermoengine raised a lot of questions,
the only real question is "does this even make a difference in terms
of cooling"? This also happens to be the only question we can really answer
about the change in the Thermoengine's design, and one that we will be putting to
rest in a few moments.

When we
first reviewed the hollow Thermoengine it performed at the top of the class of reference heatsinks. Its efficient design impressed
us just as much as the numbers when we tested it on the FrostyTech
Synthetic Temperature Test Platform. The hollow inner chamber, as demonstrated by sites like Overclockers.com and
HardOCP.com, only served to heighten the perceived capabilities of this elegant aluminum extrusion
design. We were very impressed with the results of those
heatsinks we tested, and we still
are.